B - 63 Relationship between Executive Functioning and Trauma Symptom Report in Healthy Older Adults.

Abstract

The study investigated the relationship between trauma symptoms and executive functioning (EF) in healthy older adults, emphasizing the importance of assessing the trauma history of those with subclinical trauma and stressor-related disorders in neuropsychological evaluations. It was hypothesized that age is negatively correlated with trauma symptoms, and trauma symptoms are negatively correlated with EF performance. This cross-sectional investigation included 520 adults ages 50-85 (67.9% Female; Education: 15.95(2.31); 87.9% White, 7.7% Black, 3.3% Asian, 0.6% Native American, 0.6% Other) from the Nathan Kline Institute's Rockland Sample. Trauma was measured by the total raw score of the Trauma Symptom Checklist-40 (TSC-40) and six subscale scores. EF was measured by performance on selected D-KEFS measures. Separate Pearson correlations were used to compare age to trauma scores, and EF performance to trauma scores. The anxiety subscale of TSC-40 showed a significant weak correlation with age, r (518) = -0.138, p = 0.001. Age was not correlated with any other TSC-40 subscales. The TSC-40 sexual abuse (SA) subscale showed a significant weak correlation with Color-Word Inhibition r(518) = -0.096, p = 0.031 and Trail Making-Switching r(518) = -0.106, p = 0.016. The remaining TSC-40 subscales were not correlated with other EF measures. The study demonstrated that the overall severity of trauma symptoms is not associated with age in older adults. Older adults with fewer symptoms associated with SA showed higher EF abilities. Future investigations will assess how gender and socioeconomic status affect the association between trauma and EF in older adults.